Mr. Bene has served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Electronic Arts since October 2004. From April 2004 to October 2004, Mr. Bene held the position of Vice President, Acting General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, and from June 2003 to April 2004, he held the position of Vice President and Associate General Counsel. Prior to June 2003, Mr. Bene had served as internal legal counsel since joining the Company in March 1995. Mr. Bene earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School, and received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University. Mr. Bene is a member of the Bar of the State of California.
Picture from http://aboutus.ea.com/executive-sectionofficers.action#sb As bandwidth, and consumer trust, continues to expand, streaming is quickly becoming a viable distribution method for entertainment. This new mode of distribution brings advantages – the ability to tailor the entertainment experience, business model flexibility, cost reduction – but it also brings a host of legal challenges and obstacles. Streaming entertainment is the most recent in a long history of technological advances (the invention of television, or the VCR, are earlier examples) that shake up existing legal regimes in the entertainment field. Issues such as compensation for the use of IP rights (performers, music, literary works), protection of consumer information, and banking regulations are just a few of the sometimes obvious, and sometimes not-so-obvious, obstacles that arise.
Steve Bené (SLS ’91) is the General Counsel of Electronic Arts, a leading videogame publisher headquartered in Redwood Shores. Steve’s been in-house at EA for 14 years, and in that time has seen many advances in the technology that brings electronic games to consumers world-wide. EA has also continually experimented with new modes of distribution for its digital game content, and new business models for monetizing that content. Steve will discuss the latest efforts of the EA legal team to understand and navigate the legal issues that arise from the company’s plans to stream games over the Internet. The title and metaphor of this discussion comes from the iconic scene in the original Star Wars – where Han Solo and Chewbaca pilot the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid field as they are pursued by Imperial fighters. And while this presentation will provide nowhere near the adrenaline rush of watching the Millennium Falcon crew dodge and weave through life-threatening obstacles in order to deliver the ship’s precious contents to their destination . . . well, you get the point.
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